Helpless
by Exploding Dandelion
Summary: Donatello doesn't know what else to do but turn to his lab and look for a way to fix things. Fix Mr. O'Neil, Timothy, whoever else winds up caught up in all this. He has to fix this. There isn't a choice. Not for him and not for those who are forced to watch it happen.


**I wrote this story some time ago but have only just got around to publishing it. Takes place before "Mutagen Man Unleashed." I'm not sure what I think about it now, but it couldn't hurt to share. I hope you all enjoy and thank you for reading!**

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Quiet seeps into the room as Splinter leaves, the boys now alone in the dank of their sewer home. Donatello glances up at his brothers, shifting his focus to each sibling. None of them seem to notice, or willing to meet, his stare. Each set of eyes does their best to look away from the tallest turtle.

Something inside Don's chest snaps and falls, a scream itching to tear from his throat and blame them, blame Mikey, blame someone for what happened. But nothing comes up but an odd choked noise that Donatello quickly stifles down. Don's chest rises and falls with each slow and deliberate breath. His gaze falls back to the floor, closing his eyes and shoulders dropping. He doesn't wait for someone to speak, turning away and walking toward his lab with quick, silent steps.

Disappearing around the corner brings frantic calling of his name. Mikey shouts after him, begging him to come back, a sorry bursting out before Raphael intervenes, giving Mikey the same advice he'd given Donatello hours before.

"Give Don time."

Don shuts the lab door before he hears anymore. The snap and thud sound more than final to Donatello and he rests his head on the cool metal of the door.

Silence ebbs away as the noises of his lab take over and bloat the room. One machine whirrs constantly, spitting out small data sheets of a mutagen analysis he'd set up before leaving for the mission. A fan sits nearby, blowing on max as a make-shift cooling device but tossing scraps of paper through the room. Timothy's tube bubbles and pops, his syrupy body swishing as his eyes move. Don feels Tim's eyes on him but doesn't look back or move from the door. Even his lab can do nothing to blot out April's voice, April's words, April's hate-filled face as she knocked his hand away.

Throat tightening, Don grips the door as best he can, curling his fingers against the metal. His eyes feel hot and wet, waves of shame pouring over his skin. "I can't-I can't believe I'm actually going to-" he stops himself and slams one foot down, eyes flying open as he hurries to his bundle of desks.

Glancing at Timothy, he smiles at what looks like a concerned expression. "I'm all right. I just-we-" Don sighs, rubbing a hand over his face, "I messed up today. Really, really messed up." Sensei's words have done nothing to soothe him and Don looks toward the ceiling, chuckling and shaking his head. "Just like I did with you," Don says with another low chuckle, voice croaking slightly. "Just like I did with you…" he repeats more quietly, looking back down toward his desks.

Timothy's eyes widen and he tries to shake his eyes stalks, but Don doesn't notice. Instead, he reaches for one picture on his desk: April on a swing, laughing as he pushes her. He studies the photo for several minutes, chest swelling and face warming before he finally puts the picture aside. His fingers fumble with the frame before he decides to simply turn it away rather than face it down. Falling into his chair, he pulls a notebook and test tube of mutagen towards him, flinging a bottom desk drawer open with his foot and scooping out loose bolts, springs, wires, and casings onto his desk.

"Need to make some adjustments on the mutagen tracker to compensate for the huge amount of samples all over New York. And actually _finish_ the mutagen tracker. Maybe I can limit how much it will detect within any given range so it won't be overwhelmed. At least then we wouldn't get pulled every direction whenever we tried to find a canister. And that sample I picked up a few days ago didn't respond to any of the last string of compounds, so I'll need to try set sixteen when I finish this. I hope it doesn't blow up again. Last time it set me back three days and destroyed the last few samples…"

Donatello continues to mutter to himself, hands moving like his thoughts, fast, twitchy, and unsure where to focus. His voice is hurried, hitching when there's a break in his thoughts, only for the pause to stutter into a new stream of words. Faster, as if he were wasting time if he wasn't speaking.

Timothy watches Don's fever pace, glancing at a nearby clock as time dwindles away. Almost huffing within his glass tube, Tim moves his eyes stalks backward, flipping them up toward the top of the tube before slamming them down against the glass. Don flinches at the soft bump but quickly recovers, shuffling several papers into their proper order before spreading them back out across his second desk. He brings out several highlighters, color coding lines by importance.

Tim glares at Don's shell, eyes still throbbing when he tries again, harder than before. Pain erupts, like fire has been taken to his eyes, and small whines escape his mouth, muffled by his gelatinous body and the glass.

Don freezes and swivels around in his chair, pushing himself toward Timothy's casing and scanning him. "You've got to be more careful, Tim. It'll be a lot harder for me to treat injuries in your current state." Time shakes his eye stalks at Don, glaring harder at the turtle, then his desks, the clock, and switching his gaze between the three until he's more than sure Donatello understands.

It dawns on the turtle well before Tim's third try, and a sad, tired smile crosses his lips. "I know it's late to be working on this, Tim, but these problems aren't going to fix themselves. I need to help my brothers track down the mutagen in the most efficient way possible. And more importantly, I need to develop a compound that will reverse these mutations. Mr. O'Neil's, _yours_," Don places a hand on the side of the glass, face falling, "And anyone else that comes after."

Timothy gives another small whine and Don wipes the worry from his face as best he can, smiling uneasily and eyes stormy. "No. No," Don repeats, forcing strength into his voice, "I'm going to fix this, Tim. I'm going to make this right. I'll make you human again and bring you back home, to your family. And I'll bring April's dad back to her again. I'll _fix_ this. I have to fix this."

He says it earnestly, desperation tinging his voice. Tim stares, searching Donatello even after the turtle turns away. Don says it again, more softly, more to himself, "I'll fix this," as he brings his work toward him. He writes out new compound sets to try and theories and means to compensate the mutagen's stability. Minutes reach hours, time creeping on Donatello like a vine, squeezing the same phrase out of him every hour or so.

"I'll fix this, I'll fix this, I'll fix this."

Timothy studies Don as he works, eying how unsteady the turtle's fingers become as the hours crawl by. He watches Don turn away his brothers when they knock and call, and when Don finally slumps over his desk at four in the mourning, utterly exhausted and lights blaring down like a spotlight.

And he watches long after, silent, immobile.

Helpless.


End file.
